PRIVACY STATEMENT

Data Privacy

Our website may be used without entering personal information. Different rules may apply to certain services on our site, however, and are explained separately below. We collect personal information from you (e.g. name, address, email address, telephone number, etc.) in accordance with the provisions of German data protection statutes. Information is considered personal if it can be associated exclusively to a specific natural person.

The legal framework for data protection may be found in the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and the Telemedia Act (TMG).

The provisions below serve to provide information as to the manner, extent and purpose for collecting, using and processing personal information by the provider.

Use of Facebook components

Our website employs components provided by facebook.com. Facebook is a service of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA. Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Facebook component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this Facebook component. Through this process, Facebook is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. When you access our site while logged into Facebook, Facebook uses information gathered by this component to identify the precise page you are viewing and associates this information to your personal account on Facebook. Whenever you click on the “Like“ button, for example, or enter a comment, this information is transmitted to your personal account on Facebook and stored there. In addition, Facebook is informed of your visit to our website. This occurs regardless of whether you click on a component or not. If you wish to prevent the transfer to and storage of data by Facebook about you and your interaction with our website, you must first log out of Facebook before visiting our website. The data protection policies of Facebook provide additional information, in particular about the collection and use of data by Facebook, your rights in this regard as well as the options available to you for protecting your privacy: https://de-de.facebook.com/about/privacy/ In addition, tools are freely available on the market that can be used to block Facebook social plug-ins with add-ons from being added to all commonly used browsers: http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/ You can find an overview of Facebook plugins at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

Use of Twitter recommendation components

Our website employs components provided by Twitter. Twitter is a service of Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Twitter component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this component from Twitter. Through this process, Twitter is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that Twitter collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that Twitter collects. To the best of our knowledge, Twitter collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying Twitter components. Additional information may be obtained from the Twitter data privacy policy, at: http://twitter.com/privacy.

Use of YouTube components with enhanced data protection mode

On our website we use components (videos) of YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave., 94066 San Bruno, CA, USA, a company belonging to Google Inc., Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. To this end, we use the “ – enhanced data protection mode – ” option provided by YouTube. When you display a page that has an embedded video, a connection will be made to the YouTube server and the content will appear on the website via a communication to your browser. According to the information provided by YouTube, in “ – enhanced data protection mode -”, data is only transferred to the YouTube server, in particular which of our websites you have visited, if you watch the video. If you are logged onto YouTube at the same time, this information will be matched to your YouTube member account. You can prevent this from happening by logging out of your member account before visiting our website.

Use of the web analysis service PIWIK

Our website uses the web analysis service PIWIK. To carry out this analysis, PIWIK uses cookies. Cookies are small text files that are stored to your computer and provide analysis of your use of the site. The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address, are transmitted to our PIWIK server and stored there. As part of this process, you IP address is immediately anonymized so that you as user remain anonymous to us. The information generated by the cookie about your use of this site is not transferred to third parties. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.

Information, Cancellation, Deletion

On the basis of the Federal Data Protection Act, you may contact us at no cost if you have questions relating to the collection, processing or use of your personal information, if you wish to request the correction, blocking or deletion of the same, or if you wish to cancel explicitly granted consent. Please note that you have the right to have incorrect data corrected or to have personal data deleted, where such claim is not barred by any legal obligation to retain this data.

Cookies

Our website makes use of so-called cookies in order to recognize repeat use of our website by the same user/internet connection subscriber. Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores on your computer. They are used to improve our website and services. In most cases these are so-called “session cookies” that are deleted once you leave our website. To an extent, however, these cookies also pass along information used to automatically recognize you. Recognition occurs through an IP address saved to the cookies. The information thereby obtained is used to improve our services and to expedite your access to the website. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.

Server Data

For technical reasons, data such as the following, which your internet browser transmits to us or to our web space provider (so called server log files), is collected: – type and version of the browser you use – operating system – websites that linked you to our site (referrer URL) – websites that you visit – date and time of your visit – your Internet Protocol (IP) address. This anonymous data is stored separately from any personal information you may have provided, thereby making it impossible to connect it to any particular person. The data is used for statistical purposes in order to improve our website and services.

Contacting Us

On our website we offer you the opportunity to contact us, either by email and/or by using a contact form. In such event, information provided by the user is stored for the purpose of facilitating communications with the user. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.